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ORATION _,, 



DELIVKEKD 



ON THE FOUllTH OF JULY, 185;5, 



AT THE CAPITOL, 



IN THE HALL OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, IN THE CITY OF 
WASHINGTON, 



BY JAMES MANDEVILLE CARLISLE, ESQ. 



Vublishctl by the Committee of Arrangements for the National Celebration of that 
Anniversary. 




WASHINGTON : 
KIRKWOOD & McGILL, PRINTERS. 

1855. 






)g£5 



C 



Washington, D. C., July b, 1855. 
Dear Sir : 

The Committee of Arrangements for the National Celebration of the 
4th of July respectfully request you to furnish them, for publication, a copy 
of your beautiful and patriotic Oration delivered yesterday in the Hall of the 
House of Representatives. 

Very truly, 

THOMAS MILLER, M. D., Chairman. 

JAMES L. EDWARDS, 

GEORGE SAVAGE, 

GEORGE McNEIR, 

JOHN C. FITZPATRICK, 

WILLIAM JONES, M. D., 

JOHN F. CALLAN, 

Committee of Arrangementt, 
James M. Carlisle, Esq., 

Present. 



Washington, Juh/ (i, 1855. 
Gentlemen : 

I have the honor to acknowledge your note of yesterday, and to 
place at your disposal a copy of the Oration of which you are pleased to 
speak in such kind and flattering terms. 

With great respect, gentlemen, 

Your most obedient servant, 

J. M. CARLISLE. 
To Dr. Thos. Miller, 

James L. Edwards, Esq., 
George Savage, Esq., 
George McNeir, Esq., 
John C. Fitzpatrick, Esq., 
Wm. Jones, M. D., 
John F. Callan, Esq., 

Committee, <jt. <j-c. 



ORATION. 



Fellow-Citizens : 

Ours is indeed a glorious heritage ! 

This is the earliest thought, coming with the dawn to 
awaken and to fill your hearts and mine at each return of this 
auspicious day. And with it comes the grateful and the rev- 
erent impulse to bless and praise Almighty God for all the 
precious memories and resplendent hopes that, like a throng- 
ing company of angels, hasten, and in revolving years shall 
ever hasten, to attend the gates of light and usher in this 
brightest morning in the calendar of time ! 

Yes ! it is a day freighted with the load of ages. It 
is a day big with the destinies of man. It is a day to which 
all people, in all time to come, shall ever turn to animate 
their hopes, to nerve their constancy, invigorate their courage, 
and confirm their faith, as often as that struggle shall recur 
which, here begun, shall sooner or later, but still surely and 
finally extend the blessings of liberty, in some form or other, 
to every nation and people, and kindred and tongue, even to 
the utmost limits of the earth. 

This must be the work of centuries. But the influences of 
this day shall pervade them all, and stretch away even to the 
last syllable of recorded time. For what was in tlie begin- 



ning but the feeble, flickering ray of a distant star has now 
blazed into a sun, pouring its flood of light over the land and 
over the sea, warming and cheering the heart of civilized man 
wheresoever there beats a heart large enough to embrace the 
love of liberty and deep enough for that devotion which liberty 
exacts. What was, even Avithin the memory of many here, 
still a doubtful speculation, or at best an abstract truth, which 
beyond our own borders was but whispered from mouth to ear, 
is now a being and a power in the august form of a Republic, 
whose voice is heard everywhere under the whole canopy of 
heaven, and wherever heard proclaims the history of which 
this day is the perpetual and expressive token. -J 

Now, indeed, all the nations of the earth witness the great 
fact and acknowledge the sublime reality of a people strong 
in war, stable in peace, enlightened through all its masses, 
exhaustless in all the treasures of nature and of art, gigantic 
and ever growing in its proportions, conscious of its power, 
self-created, self-existent, self-restrained. The world now 
knows of a surety that the bountiful Creator has not reserved 
the trust of government for 

" Kings and awful fathers of mankind," 

but has freely bestowed upon the masses of men those powers 
and capacities which, rightly educated and virtuously directed, 
make them their own best rulers. 

This truth, first deeply planted on this memorable day, shall 
strike its roots deeper and deeper and stretch its branches 
higher and wider as time rolls on, until the Avhole family of 
nations shall repose under its thrice-blessed shelter. No 
power on earth can uproot it ; no depth of degeneracy can 
banish it from the memory of man. Heaven-bestowed, like 
the light of heaven, though clouds and darkness may from 



time to time obscure it, it shall ever break forth, again and 
again, till time shall be no more. 

Truly, then, this day belongs not alone to us, but to all the 
earth ; truly, it relates not alone to the past and present, but 
to the distant and still ever-distant future. 

And yet ours alone are its first fruits. To us alone has 
descended the inheritance of the precious trusts which it 
brought forth. To us alone it still pertains to guard and cher- 
ish what of right belongs to all mankind. How sacred is the 
priesthood which has been laid upon us ! How solemn is our 
ofiice among the nations ! How awful are our relations to the 
past, the present, and the future ! The voices of our fathers, not 
more than the cry of remote posterity, are even now sounding 
in my ears. Together they adjure me by all that is forceful 
on my conscience, by all that is dear to me in life, by all that 
binds me to my country and my race, by the proud memories 
which belong to this day and this place, by the graves of those 
who have gone before me, by my home and hearthstone, by my 
children and my children's children — they adjure me to be 
faithful to my trust. They adjure me to remember in every 
act and word which, in the humblest and strictest sphere, may 
tend to influence my country's future — to remember, always 
and everywhere, what inheritance is mine, and how it is en- 
tailed to the latest posterity of man. They adjure me to go 
back to the deep and pure fountains out of Avhich this swelling 
tide has sprung which now bears us on through ever-widening 
channels of power and prosperity. They warn me to hold to 
the faith of the fathers. They admonish me to shun as a 
fatal pestilence whatever is sectional, whatever is narrow, 
whatever is less broad and fair than the Union and the Consti- 
tution ,whatever thrusts itself betwixt man and his Maker, and 
arrogates the power, by any indirection, to abridge or qualify 



8 

his civil rights and privileges because of his religious creed. 
Alas ! that such a warning should even for the passing hour 
be unheeded by any who have part or lot in this day's memo- 
ries I 

( Fellow-citizens, it is good for us to be here. It is good for us 
on such occasions as this to revive the sense of those obligations 
which have fallen upon us as a nation, and on each one of us 
as a man, who, whether by the course of years passed here in 
his native land, or through the term prescribed for his adop- 
tion, has become one of the active body of the American peo- 
ple, bound to all their duties, joint possessor with them of all 
their privileges. 

It is good for Avoman to be here. It is good for her from 
whom must spring the future men of the republic — her on 
whom it most depends whether their earliest, and thus their 
latest, impressions shall be such as are becoming in a race of 
freemen. Oh ! if I could win from Heaven one gift most of all 
fi'uitful of blessings to my country, it would be the power to 
inspire the heart of every mother with the noble consciousness 
that she is indeed a priestess at the altar of her country's free- 
dom. I see the young boy standing at her knee, his face 
beaming with all his mother's purity and his father's soul, listen- 
ing with his whole heart to the story, simply told but grand 
in its simplicity, of which this day is the epitome. I see his 
young eyes fill and fire ; I mark the swelling of his youthful 
breast, and read upon his fair and candid brow that in him 
are now sown the seed of the Revolution. 

Gentle, pure, noble, sublime mission of the mother ! How 
deeply are impressed on my own heart those simple early les- 
sons, which from that sacred source first taught me the mean- 
ing of this hallowed day ! 

But let us now turn from those thouglits and feelings, so 



9 

inseparable from the occasion, and devote some moments to a 
survey of our rich inheritance. Let us compare its begin- 
ning with its increase ; and let us not forget to trace that 
increase to its true sources. It is thus that we may convert 
the hour not simply to congratulation and thankfulness, but 
to guidance and instruction. 3 

We behold, then, at the first glance, a marvellous consum- 
mation. (^Looking back through a series of years) still within 
the period of the life of man, we see a result to which, under 
other circumstances and less favorable influences, as many 
centuries might not be equal. Behold yonder — even in the 
days of the childhood of some who are yet lingering among us — 
(the thirteen colonies, sparsely populated ; in active resources 
apparently poor indeed ; separated from each other physically 
by wildernesses, morally by distinct and independent govern- 
ments ; with no blessed Union, no common bond except the 
distant mother country ; hugging the Atlantic shore, and 
looking across the broad ocean for all that could give them 
nationality and presence among States^^ Behold the 

" Antres vast and deserts idle" 

which lie behind them. See in their condition and thoii- 
prospects all of hopelessness wdiich commonly belongs to tlio 
colonial, state, aggravated by the power and the will of the 
strongest master then on earth. Recall the crisis. Witness 
the patient appeals to reason and remonstrance — the " repeated 
petitions answered only by repeated injuries."' Then dwell 
upon every word and letter of that imperishable Declaration, 
which, with the calm dignity that belonged to so momentous 
an occasion, and in the apparent consciousness that its lan- 
guage would be repeated for ages, recapitulates its motives, 
and announces the pact — whose consequences are yet unfath- 



10 

omable — that " these United Colonies are, and of right ought 
to be, free and independent States." 

Pause here a moment and count the cost of that Declara- 
tion. Sum up the blood and treasure which the wise men who 
published it to the world must have surely estimated as neces- 
sary to be poured out in maintaining that position from which 
there was now no honorable retreat. Place yourselves in 
imagination in their midst. Look abroad upon the field thus 
opened, and cast about you for resources. How many hearts 
would have quailed under that prospect of immense dispro- 
portion betwixt the means and end! How many would at 
best have sunk into a dark and desperate constancy, prepared 
to perish in the contest, and hoping for nothing better ! But 
not such was the spirit of the Revolution. No gloomy 
presage of vengeance or of self-immolation presided over 
its councils. Open as the day, challenging the attention of 
the world, and looking hopefully to heaven, our fathers gave 
their banner to the breeze. A dreary wilderness indeed 
seemed to stretch itself before them ; but a Divine inspiration 
had revealed to them the land of promise. Blessed be God ! 
that he " went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead 
them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them 
light to go by day and night. He took not away the pillar 
of the cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night from before 
the people." 

Yes ! It was even so. No man can look back upon those 
scenes and not perceive the Almighty hand leading and direct- 
ing all. Not more surely did it govern the chosen people of 
old. True, the age of miracles had passed. The sacred moun- 
tain and the burning bush no longer attested the presence 
of the Deity on earth. But to him who sees the providence 
of God in the course of nations — to him who is not blind to 



11 

the relation betwixt this ^YOl■kl of ours and its beneficent Crea- 
tor — it is clear as the morning light, certain as his own life, that 
Washington was the chosen servant and the gift of God — his 
eyes ever fixed upon that pillar of the cloud by day, that pil- 
lar of fire by night. Test his character by any scale of human 
greatness, and you will find it immeasurable ; try to sound it 
by any plummet adapted merely for the depths of human 
motives and human constancy, and it will prove unfathomable. 
The surging tide of time has borne upon its bosom but one such 
ark of liberty, proof alike against the storm and sunshine — 
firm and incorruptible in all time of tribulation, in all time of 
prosperity. No fitter day than this to dwell upon his virtues, 
to ponder on his counsels, to recount his deeds ; no fitter 
place — what place so fit as on these consecrated plains, where, 
when his work was done, he traced his immortal autograph 
and forever stampe d his name ? ) 

It is my part, by the charm-word of that name, to evoke 
them from your memories, where they are so faithfully pre- 
served. In this audience it were superfluous to do more. In 
your hearts, as in mine, his history is treasured up ; in your 
hearts, as in mine, his parting words are garpered. When 
they are forgotten or unheeded the shades of night will have 
fallen upon our history and our hopes. 

We trace our origin as a nation, then, to the special favor 
of the Giver of every good and perfect gift ; and in the life 
and character of Washington we learn what are the fitting 
instruments of such a favor. Kindred virtues, indeed, are 
piety and patriotism ! The "soul of man contains nothing 
larger, nothing nobler. " God and our Country" is a cry 
which must ever summon up every generous impulse of the 
heart, every manly quality of daring and devotion. 

And now, passing over for the moment the intermediate 



12 

time and means, let us see to what point of progress we have 
reached. How shall it be aptlj described ? Not in a br^ief 
and fugitive discourse like this, but rather in volumes of statis- 
tics and libraries of philosophical speculation. If we look to 
the boundaries of our country, we are astounded at the change. 
We find her already stretched from ocean to ocean. From 
the extremest West we are reaching forth the arms of peace 
and commerce to the furthest East, to gather in 

" the wealth of Ormus and of Ind." 

The shores of the Pacific are already alive with the busy hum 
of commerce, and teeming with all the elements of empire. 
In the incredibly short space of six years from the period 
when that great region passed under the government of the 
Union, the most wonderful revolution has taken place in its 
Avhole condition, physical and moral. A fair and beautiful 
statue, it lay dull and lifeless. Touched by the Promethean 
spark which sprung from the great event which we now com- 
memorate, it started into life and vigor. The history of the 
Avorld can furnish no parallel for its progress, and scarcely a 
spot on the face of the whole habitable globe can promise so 
iuiposing a futifi'e. Were it not unsuited to an address like 
this, plain facts and figures from the public archives would be 
far more impressive than all the power of the most command- 
ing eloquence on such a theme. You have them at hand. 
Turn to them and see of Avhat marvels our free and happy 
institutions are capable. * 

Two oceans, on either hand, now mark our limits ; and 
what so shortly since lay between them a wilderness as track- 
less and apparently more impassable than any unknown waste 
of waters is already, in large part, occupied by civilization, 
;ind for the rest is traversed with more ease and certainty 



13 

than our fathers found in passing through the limits of the 
thi^^teen States of the Revolution. Northward and southward, 
to the lakes and the Gulf, we have spread. Great cities upon 
the Atlantic border, great cities upon distant rivers and lakes ; 
towns, hamlets, villages, plantations, ftirms, and thriving 
frontier settlements have everywhere marked the magnificent 
progress of the country. Science and the arts, while adding 
to the sum of human knowledge and treasure throughout the 
world, have unconsciously contributed to bind together our 
most widely-separated regions, by instituting a new standard 
of time and space. Men pass rapidly and securely betAveen 
our utmost borders. The men of Boston and the men of New 
Orleans may now converse together almost as face to face 
with a whole empire lying between them. And beyond our- 
shores, 

" Far as the bi'eeze can bear, the billows foaiii," 

our commerce whitens every sea, and the stars of our ensign 
are familiar as the stars of heaven. 

From the less than three millions of souls of the days of 
the Revolution, we have swollen to nearly ten times that num- 
ber. Our thirteen States have become one and thirty, with 
seven organized Territories, besides this Federal District. 
Our territory has expanded from about eight hundred thou- 
sand to largely over three millions of square miles. Our 
citizen-soldiery of effective men, between the ages of eighteen 
and forty-five, now nearly equal the whole population of men, 
women, and children, bond and free, on the day when our 
forefathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred 
honor to the Independence of their country. The Confedera- 
tion, which nobly served the exigencies of its times, has long 
since given place to a perfect Union, which, while it imparts 



14 

life and vigor and concedes ycparate action to every member, 
has consolidated them all into one gigantic body, conscious of 
every power of unity and individuality, and yet feeling its just 
dependence on each and all of its constituents. 

To the day of that Union, to the date of the Constitution 
which gave it birth and prescribed the laws of its existence, 
may we securely trace all that gives us dignity and power 
among the nations of the earth ; all that has given us such 
unexampled growth in everything that constitutes a State ; all 
that warrants an equal progress for the future ; all that this 
day showers upon all our people throughout all the land every 
blessing which human government can make or mar. From 
the time of the Union and the Constitution, the national and 
State statistics show, in every element of national grandeur, an 
unparalleled progression. The powers granted to the Federal 
Government have been proven by experience to be not only 
necessary to national unity, but in themselves, when wisely 
administered, the highest and most fruitful sources of national 
increase and prosperity. Whether in regard to our relations 
to the rest of the world, or with reference to our internal 
development, no thoughtful and considerate man can doubt 
that this Union and this Constitution are not only the sources 
of our present power, security, and happiness as a people, but 
are the sure pledges and the indispensable conditions of their 
duration in the future. 

And now let us inquire what have been the chief agents of 
this Union and this Constitution, under the Supreme Kuler of 
Nations, in bringing us to our present state in this amazingly 
brief period of time. 

How can we better approach such an investigation than by 
asking first, with the often quoted thought of the poet, so 
beautifully rendered into English: 



15 

" What constitutes a State ? 

Not high rais'd battlements or labored mound, 
Thick wall or moated gate ; 

Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd ; 
Not bays and broad arm'd ports, 

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride ; 
Not starr'd and spangled courts, 

Where low-brow'd baseness wafts perfume to pride. 
No ! — Men, high-minded Men, 

***** 

Men who their duties know, 

But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain." 

Here lies the grand secret. Ages ago, at creation's dawn, 
this broad continent, then, as now, bore in its bosom every 
element of greatness, except that without which all its vast 
resources were counted dead, all its exhaustless treasures 
nothing worth. Men ! Men ! Men ! These constitute a State. 

Then, as now, two mighty oceans washed these shores. 
Then, as now, broad fields and mighty rivers, inland seas, great 
harbors, mountains of mineral wealth, and valleys teeming 
with all the rich luxuriance of varied nature lay within these 
borders. But all these were but the means and instruments 
for Men. 

Our progress is the product of our popalation. To the 
extraordinary increase of our people — an increase to whicli 
the natural growth of nations has never even distantly ap- 
proached — to this is due, more than to all other sources com- 
bined, our present happy, secure, and dignified position. Not 
even the unthinking fanatic who, blindly pursuing a phantom, 
is loudest in his acclamations to the wretched delusion of the 
hour, can still be blind to this significant fact, once placed 
prominently before him. It is a truth so obvious and so trite 
as almost to demand some apology for its reproduction here. 
The natural growth of population, nowhere on the face of the 



16 

earth, at any time, has been equal in the most remote degree 
to emulate these results. No one will seriously pretend it. 
Nor will any man not utterly besotted presume to deny that 
our prosperity and power have kept even pace with our popu- 
lation, and that our population has outstripped the career of 
all other nations in that respect, solely because of the unprece- 
dented immigration which we have invited and obtained. 

And how have we invited and obtained it ? Not simply by 
throwing open our ports to the craven spirits of every land, 
content, for the privilege of being hewers of wood and draAV- 
crs of water, to be among us, but not of us. Not by this, nor 
by anything short of the honest tender and free pledge of 
brotherhood, and of a species of political regeneration Ayhich^ 
in the reasonably appointed time and manner, should confer 
on every exile who should have finally planted the lives of him- 
self and his descendants in our soil as that of his adopted 
country, the privileges of citizenship, obliterating forever his 
ties of natural allegiance, and by the same act merging all his 
antecedents in a new fountain of his life and race. 

This is political regeneration. Let those sneer at it who 
arc themselves too narrow of soul to comprehend Avhat it is to 
be truly an American citizen. Let those deny its efficacy who 
are ignorant or forgetful of our country's history, or who arc 
unable or unwilling to fathom its meaning or perceive its 
moral. 

Emigrants ourselves in the beginning, and fugitives from 
the oppression of the Old World, by the tide of immigration 
mainly have we been borne to our present condition. To 
repress this immigration, to interpose obstacles to naturaliza- 
tion, nay, even to refrain from active measures for the en- 
couragement of both, was by our forefathers regarded as a 
tyrannical grievance, fit to be set forth prominently in the cata- 



17 

logue or injuries " submitted to a candid world" in justification 
of the momentous measure which we are here to celebrate. In 
their solemn impeachment of the British King, they say : 

" He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States ; for that 
purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass 
others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising tlie conditions of 
new appropriations of land."' 

In the first address of President Washington to Congress, 
among the earliest subjects which he commended to their con- 
sideration and action in carrying the new Government into 
efi'ect, was that of naturalization. Accordingly, the first 
Congress under the Constitution fixed the term of naturaliza- 
tion at two years — an Act which received the signature of 
Washington. Afterwards, in the administration of the elder 
Adams, in the same spirit which, gave birth to the notorious 
alien and sedition laws, the term of probation was extended 
to fourteen years. But in 1801 Mr. Jefferson, in his first 
message to Congress, uses this language : 

" I cannot omit recommending a revisal of the laws on the subject of 
naturalization. Considering the ordinary chances of human life, a denial 
of citizenship under a residence of fourteen years is a denial to a great pro- 
portion of those who ask it, and controls a policy pursued from their tirst 
settlement by many of these States, and still believed of consequence to 
their prosperity. And shall we refuse," (continues the author of the Declai'a- 
tion of Independence.) '' shall we refuse the unhappy fugitives from distress 
that hospitality which even the savages of the wilderness extended to our 
fathers arriving in this land? . Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on 
this globe ? The Constitution indeed has wisely provided that for admis- 
sion to certain offices of important trust a residence shall be required 
sufficient to develop character and design ; but might not the general charac- 
ter and capabilities of a citizen be safely communicated to every one 

MANIFESTING A BONA FIDE PURPOSE OF EMBARKINCi HIS LIFK ANT* FORTUNES 
PERMANENTLY AMONG US ?"' 

Such was the doctrine of Jefferson. The experience of 
#2 



18 

the Revolution and of the administrations of Washington and 
the elder Adams had not changed those views of immigration 
nnd naturalization Avhich were briefly expressed in the language 
already quoted from that immortal writing which has forever 
connected his name with this day. Accordingly, in the year 
1802, in the administration of Jefferson, was passed the 
general naturalization act, which is substantially the law to 
this day. 

These are the American doctrines on this important subject : 
not, indeed, of any " American Party,' but of America her- 
self — of the men of all parties who are not prepared to sacri- 
fice to the hope of ephemeral party sway the earliest and 
longest tested principles and policy of a Government founded 
in patriotic wisdom and forecast, and hitherto supported by 
the affections and approved J)y the judgments of a free and 
magnanimous people. 

This is no day for party strifes and criminations. But it 
is eminently a day to challenge and to condemn whatever 
falsely and unworthily assumes the American name. In your 
name and right, therefore, fellow-citizens ; in the names of the 
departed Fathers of the Revolution ; in the names and by the 
authority of those who pledged themselves to the great char- 
ter of rights ; in the names of the heroes, native and foreign- 
born, whose blood was mingled on many a battle-field, from 
the plains of Abraham, where Montgomery fell, to those of 
Savannah, where Pulaski perished ; in the name of the Con- 
stitution and the Country, I would arraign before you the 
leaders of this so-called "American party," and demand to 
know from what teacher or what text-book of American doc- 
trine they have learned to band themselves into a faction 
practically to disfranchise and excommunicate a large body of 
the people of America ? I demand their precedents in the 



19 

history of our common country for attempting this enormous 
fraud upon a whole class of citizens, who have become citizens 
upon the faith of the Constitution and the Laws. I call upon 
them to tell us by what authority they have attempted to sow 
discord and to inlBame envy, hatred, malice, and all unchari- 
tableness between brethren of the same family, children of the 
same common country ? " American purify .'" Are ws not 
ALL Americans? Or are our Constitution and our Laws but 
a solemn cheat and a delusion ? And are those who, in accord- 
ance with their requirements and by virtue of their author- 
ity, have become American citizens, not indeed Americans. 
but still aliens and sojourners, strangers and enemies in our 
midst, against whom all true Americans are to band them- 
selves in dark and secret conclaves, and by a vast league, 
bound by oaths and mustered by talismanic signs, to hunt 
them, and all who recognise their equal rights, from evei-y 
post of trust and honor ; to make them feel that this is not 
their country ; that here they are but servants and by suffer- 
ance ; that here they have come only to be governed — gov- 
erned by those who will still be alien to them, since here 
^^ Americans must rule America f Miserable watchword of 
delusion and folly ! Wretched sacrilege to the American 
name I What is America, and who are Americans ? Let 
the answer be thundered in their ears by the Constitution and 
the Laws. Let it arise to confound them, from the broad 
bosom of our country, from the whole volume of its illustrious 
annals. 

But I have yielded to an impulse I could not control, and 
have departed from the course I had proposed. We Averc con- 
sidering the sources of our national prosperity. 

x\s we should have long lingered in comparative insigni- 
ficance but for our unexampled increase of population, so that 



20 

population would have been powerless to produce the results 
we have been contemplating but for our free institutions and 
our just and equal laws. The unspeakable blessings of civil 
and religious liberty have animated the whole mass, and shed 
vigor, hope, enterprise, happiness, and success through every 
department of life. Above all, perhaps, that which has most 
spread cheerfulness and contentment throughout the land; 
that which has most impressed men with the consciousness 
of freedom, and thus inspired them with all its energy, is 
that religious liberty which leaves every man to worship God 
according to the dictates of his own conscience, Avith none on 
earth to make him afraid. This, indeed, comes home to his 
heart, and mingles with every tender tie and memory of earth 
and every hope of heaven. This, indeed, is the crowning 
jewel in our country's diadem, its mild and heavenly lustre 
luis cheered many a heart in distant regions and weaned it 
from all the associations of kindred and of place. Here, (have 
men said,) here at least there is a |)erpetual dissolution of that 
unhappy union between Church and State which, whatever the 
Church and Avhatever the State, has ever and everywhere, in 
other hands than those of Deity himself, been fruitful of misery 
and oppression. Hero at least the duties and the rights of 
the citizen towards his country and his Government belong to 
a sphere Avidely and forever separated from that of his religion. 
Here at least shall ever govern that divine precept of the 
Saviour, as he held the tribute-money in his hand and with 
simple truth confounded the casuists : '" Render unto C^sar 

THE THINGS AVHICII ARE C.ESAR's, AND UNTO GOD THE THING8 

WHICH ARE God's." 

This doctrine of perfect religious freedom, of the entire and 
final separation of all questions and influences of religious 
creed from everything that directly or indirectly may give color 



21 

or direction to public affairs, tone or temper to the laws, status, 
hue, or complexion to the social or political relations of the 
individual citizen — this is a great fundamental American doc- 
trine, vital to the American name. Whoso denies it, or, 
in words admitting it, practically assails its fullest and 
widest operation in spirit and in truth, may dare to call him- 
self American, may perchance trace his lineage to some im- 
mortal name upon the scroll of independence, if such apostacy 
be imaginable, but he is now no true American ; and by and 
by, awaking from his delusion, he shall repent in sackcloth 
and ashes his desecration of his country's name. 

How wonderful is the flux and reflux of the tide of error 
in the history of man ! How constantly should we wake 
and watch, lest, returning in some new form and through some 
unguarded avenue, it overwhelm us in its dark and bitter 
waters ! Who would have imagined that any portion of the 
people of this land should now be gathering in and passionately 
hugging to their breasts the worn-out bigotry and folly which 
so long besotted the British people, but from which a quarter 
of a century ago they emancipated themselves in the name of 
"Catholic emancipation?" What prophet among our fathers 
would have ventured to predict that the time would ever come 
when honest men — men of liberal minds and patriotic motives, 
men born to the blessings of the American Union and to all the 
clear and cheerful light of its Constitution and Laws — cheated 
by the ignis fatuus of a false patriotism, would, by one bound, 
precipitate themselves to those depths of bigotry which were 
the proper realms of the pitied and forgotten dupes of Titus 
Gates — a name from which Protestant England, once its de- 
luded worshipper, has long since recoiled in horror ? 

Let any man who finds himself startled by those topics of 
the day which demagogues are wielding to excite the passions 



22 

and blind the judgments of the true-hearted people of America, 
seducing them to uproot and cast down the chief pillars of their 
own liberty in the pursuit of a phantom — let any such man 
turn to the repeated debates in the British Parliament, to the 
journals and periodicals of the day during all that angry con- 
test which resulted, six and twenty years ago, in the recogni- 
tion of the political rights of the Roman Catholic population of 
the British Empire, and let him there learn how stale and 
stamped with folly is all that tale whose lightest word, if you 
could but believe it as they Avould have you — 

•• Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood. 
Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres ; 
Thy knotted and combined locks to part, 
And each particular hair to stand an-end 
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine." 

Humbling indeed would it be to every true American to be 
confronted with the finally enlightened though tardy course 
of that monarchy, and to be justly accused of taking up its 
exploded prejudices and its cast-off errors. What ! shall such 
a course be deliberately adopted by such a Government, with 
all its long-settled policy and its established church ? And 
shall free, happy, united America now begin to retrograde 
and commence the work of religious intolerance ? Forbid it. 
Heaven ! forbid it, sacred spirit of the Eevolution, revisiting 
us this day ! 

No ! surely that day — let me rather say that long and hope- 
less night — shall never come when our country shall renounce 
and abjure a principle so inseparable from the idea of popular 
rights, so vital to the distinctive spirit of our National Consti- 
tution, as religious liberty, twin sister to civil liberty, and 
indispensable to its existence. 



23 

And how does it 

" Keep the word of promise to our ear 
And break it to our hope," 

to refrain from rekindling the fires of Smitlifield on the one 
hand, or re-enacting the fierce penalties of the no-Popery stat- 
utes on the other, while all the while a bitter intestine strife is 
suscitated, in which differing religious faiths are made the 
badges of party politics, and to profess a particular creed is to 
fall efi'ectually under a species of political excommunication 
which, could it be enforced, would practically exclude its un- 
liappy subjects from all benefit of active participation in the 
privileges of that citizenship the undeniable title to which is, 
in formal phrases, still conceded. 

Let us, fellow-citizens, hold firmly to the body and substance 
of the true faith of the Constitution, and yield ourselves, with- 
out quibble or equivocation, to its pure and honest spirit in 
proclaiming and upholding, with our whole hearts and in every 
action of our lives, the whole doctrine of religious liberty in 
its broadest, deepest, and sincerest sense. Let us ever re- 
member that the Union of Church and State, however cunningly 
it may be disguised, and by whatsoever plausible pretexts it 
may be attempted to be justified, is ever the same forbidden 
thing : repugnant to the genius of our country, inconsistent 
with the principles of the Constitution, incompatible with 
American freedom. 

Looking back, then, to the past, witnessing its products in 
the present day, and with fervent and patriotic hearts invok- 
ing continued, prosperity for these now happy, powerful, and 
united States, may we not safely conclude that in the aggre- 
gation of men — "men who their duties know, but know their 
rights, and knowing dare maintain" — in our indissoluble Union, 



24 

in our equal laws, and in our firm and constant faith and prac- 
tice of "civil and religious liberty" lies all our treasure, past, 
present, and to come ? This is the Avhole law of our freedom 
and of our imposing presence among the nations of the earth. 
By the continued, perfect, and harmonious combination of all 
these powerful elements alone may we hope that our career as 
a people shall be still upw^ard and onward, and that in the 
lapse of ages, as often as the sun shall rise to restore this 
memorable day, he shall awaken increasing millions of freemen 
to hail it with proud and grateful acclamations, and shall at 
each return gild earlier with his earliest beams the still 
ascending towers of our national glory and prosperity ! So 
MOTE IT BE ! 

Fellow-citizens, this is the first day of the new year 
in our national calendar. It should be a day of general 
jubilee and universal gratulation. Our hearts should swell 
beyond all narrow and sectarian limits — social, religious, or 
political. One people, with one common country, one common 
glory in the past, one common hope in the future, here and 
hereafter, let us leave this place this day, joining all our souls 
in one harmonious and fervent invocation of all the choicest 
blessings of Heaven upon the whole land and all that it 
inherit I 



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